Zen Masters Of China. Richard Bryan McDaniel
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Название: Zen Masters Of China
Автор: Richard Bryan McDaniel
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Здоровье
isbn: 9781462910502
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But to those who sought answers to basic questions such as why there was so much suffering in the world, the Buddha provided teachings such as the Four Noble Truths, which explain that suffering is inherent in the human condition because of desire and that only by letting go of desire can one overcome suffering. To those seeking guidance about how they should live their lives, he offered the Eightfold Path, the last two steps of which are “correct mindfulness” and “correct meditation.” And to those seeking miracles—such as the woman Kisagotami whose infant son had died from a snakebite—he responded with compassion and kindness. In Kisagotami’s case he told her that if she could find a household that would give her a single mustard seed, he would cure her child; but, he added, the household must be one wherein no one had ever died. Through this gentle method, he led her to recognize the reality of suffering, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path.
The wisdom the Buddha demonstrated in his teachings was the result of his enlightenment, but the achievement of that wisdom was not the content of his enlightenment. He was not enlightened because he understood the laws of causation or realized the formula of the Four Noble Truths. The enlightenment experience, which led him to understand these things, was beyond verbal formulae and logical structures; it could not be expressed in words. The Buddha’s insights, which were the result of his enlightenment, were recorded—and no doubt elaborated upon by others—in the scriptures called sutras. What the Buddha transmitted to Mahakasyapa was not dependent upon words and letters but something outside the scriptures. What he transmitted to Mahakasyapa was the experience of awakening itself. Mahakasyapa’s realization was the same as the Buddha’s. And when the Buddha recognized Mahakasyapa’s awakening, it was not as a result of anything the disciple had said but by how he behaved, the way in which he reacted.
In the centuries after the Buddha’s death, several schools based on his teachings arose. There was a very strict brotherhood of monks focused on personal liberation and salvation. But over time there also developed schools that focused upon specific sutras and composed elaborate commentaries on them. This resulted in an intellectual Buddhism that was, perhaps, more philosophical than religious. Eventually a popular devotional Buddhism also evolved, in which the Buddha came to be seen as a celestial being and in which devotees recited sutras, made offerings, and undertook good deeds in order to acquire merit that would lead to future auspicious rebirths.
These schools transmitted the Buddha’s instructions and teachings. But parallel to them, according to the Zen tradition, a school of meditation descended from Mahakasyapa in which the enlightenment experience was transmitted.
No doubt thousands of individuals attained awakening, but in each generation there was one individual whose experience was so deep that he was identified as a patriarch of the meditation, or dhyana, school. The names of twenty-eight individuals are recorded, spanning a thousand years, beginning with the Buddha and Mahakasyapa and continuing until Bodhidharma, the man credited with bringing the school to China. There the term dhyana was translated as chan. Some six hundred years later when the school proceeded on to Japan, the Japanese read the Chinese character for Chan as “Zen.”
CHAPTER ONE
BODHIDHARMA
The traditional list of Zen patriarchs is probably as accurate as the list of early popes in Christian lore. After the Buddha and Mahakasyapa, third in succession was the Buddha’s cousin and attendant, Ananda, who did not achieve awakening until after the Buddha’s death. Others in the list include historical figures such as Asvaghosha, the reputed author of The Awakening of the Faith in the Mahayana (twelfth patriarch) and Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism (fourteenth patriarch). The twenty-eighth in this lineage was Bodhidharma—a man whose name consists of the terms for wisdom/enlightenment (Bodhi) and teaching (dharma). Bodhidharma is credited with bringing the meditation school to China and is also considered the first patriarch of Chinese Zen.
Bodhidharma is a favorite subject of Zen painting, in which he is portrayed with exaggerated features emphasizing that to the sixth-century Chinese he would have been considered a barbarian. He is shown bearded, with prominent shaggy eyebrows, large, round eyes, and often a stern expression.
It is said that he was the third son in a prominent Brahmin family from southern India. The Brahmin were the priestly caste in the Hindu tradition, the caste that studied the various scriptures and were responsible for carrying out the intricate religious rituals associated with them. But rather than assuming the role of his caste, Bodhidharma was drawn to the practice of Buddhism and eventually became a master in the meditation school under the twenty-seventh patriarch, Prajnatara.
Whereas the Hindu faith was grounded in written texts such as the Vedas and even the Buddhism of the day was transmitted through the recorded sutras, or sermons attributed to the Buddha, Bodhidharma would describe Zen in a four-line poem as:
A special transmission outside the scriptures;
Not dependent on words or letters;
By direct pointing to the mind of man,
Seeing into one’s true nature and attaining Buddhahood.
Buddhism was a thousand years old when Bodhidharma became a member of the sangha, and, in the land of its birth, the faith had deteriorated over that time, becoming more speculative and abstract. Monks spent as much or more time analyzing the sutras as in meditating. Their faith had become theoretical rather than grounded in the experience of awakening, what the Japanese would later term kensho (ken, “seeing into or understanding something”; sho, “one’s true nature”).
Nor was Buddhism a single system any longer. Competing theories and interpretations of the sutras led to a proliferation of schools, including the establishment of two broad traditions: the conservative Theraveda (the Teaching of the Elders), which spread to Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand, and the more liberal but also at times more fanciful Mahayana, which spread north to Tibet as well as into China, Vietnam, and Korea. It was out of the Mahayana tradition (and partially in reaction to it) that Zen would evolve.
Saddened by the condition of Buddhism in India, Prajnatara suggested that Bodhidharma travel to China and determine if that land were a suitable environment in which to revitalize Zen. It was also their intention to correct the form of Buddhism then prevalent in the Celestial Kingdom.
Buddhism had been practiced in China for over four hundred years by the time of Bodhidharma’s journey, but it was largely an academic Buddhism. Chinese scholars translated the Indian sutras and composed elaborate commentaries on them. A variety of competing schools had evolved that based their teachings on one or the other of these scriptures. Devotional Buddhism was popular with the masses. There were meditation teachers as well, but none belonged to the line of transmission descended from Mahakasyapa.
Bodhidharma was an old man when he set out for China, and it took him three long, hard years to complete his journey, traveling over both land and sea, during which time he must have learned to speak Chinese. Finally, around the year 520, he landed on the southern shore СКАЧАТЬ